The very next day measures were taken which ended in the annulling of the decree rendered by the _comité de salut public_ in which the _comité de sûreté générale_, which had taken its place, once more declared Beaumarchais to be an _émigré_, replaced the seals upon his property, confiscated his revenues and on the 5th of July, 1794, arrested his wife, his two sisters, and his daughter. They were shut up in the convent of Port-Royal which had been changed into a prison and which, says Loménie, “by an atrocious irony was called _Port-Libre_, where they waited their turn to mount the fatal cart that should conduct them to the guillotine.” The ninth _thermidore_ came to put an end to these butcheries. Eleven days later, another decree of the _comité de sûreté générale_, again established, gave to the _Citoyennes_ Caron their liberty. During this frightful period of the terror, Beaumarchais, still at Hamburg, deprived of all communication with his family, was a prey to the most terrible mental agony. His correspondence shows that he had moments of the deepest despair when he asked himself if he were not losing his mind. “Where shall I address thee?” he wrote his wife. “Under what name? What shall I call thee? Who are thy friends? Whom can I consider mine? Ah, without the hope of saving my daughter, the atrocious guillotine would be sweeter to me than my horrible condition.” It was at this period that the following address to the American people was written. “Americans: Though I have served you with an indefatigable zeal, I have in my life received only bitterness for recompense, and I die your creditor. Permit then in dying that I will to my daughter the debt which you owe me. Perhaps after I am gone, other injustices, from which I cannot defend myself, will rob me of all I possess so nothing will be left for her, and perhaps Providence has ordained by your delay in paying me, that through you she will be spared absolute want. Adopt her as a worthy child of the state. Her mother, equally unfortunate, and my widow, will conduct her to you. Let her be looked upon as the daughter of a citizen! But if after these last efforts, if after all has been said, I must still feel that you will reject my demands—If I am to fear that you will refuse her arbitrators; at last, desperate, ruined in Europe as well as by you, your country being the only one in which I could beg without shame—what would remain for me to do, but to supplicate Heaven to give me the strength to take the voyage to America?